Latest Posts by niniiiyyyy - Page 6

If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.

— Emily Jane Brontë , Wuthering Heights

Cassandra Clare

there is something so beautiful and soft in looking at strangers and create, imagine, guess their lives, their feelings, worries, past and future.

My love for books, reading, pinterest, candles, listening to music, rainy days, staring at moon and iced coffee is infinite.

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

— Albert Einstein

Unknown photographer. Place des Saussaies. Paris 1950s.

Jane Austen was really out there 200 years ago writing lines like “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more” that to this day are still so swoon-worthy.

"𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒂 𝒎𝒖𝒔𝒆𝒖𝒎 𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒍 𝒐𝒇 𝒂𝒓𝒕. 𝑨𝒏𝒅 𝑰 𝒂𝒎 𝒂 𝒑𝒐𝒆𝒕 𝒊𝒏 𝒔𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒄𝒉 𝒐𝒇 𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏."

𝑨𝒗𝒊𝒋𝒆𝒆𝒕 𝑫𝒂𝒔

excuse my foolish heart but i think we should hold hands and go on bookstore dates

The academic urge to master every subject I'm taught. To learn the intricies of every language and to study every known piece of literature for the sheer fun of it. To investigate the very workings of history and bask in your discoveries. To look at art and know everything about it.

The urge to learn and know and to know it all.

self worth: part I 🧚🏻‍♂️

knowing your worth, having high self-esteem, being confident, whatever you want to call it, is important and impacts your well-being, mental health and life choices. we know this already. and it isn’t easy. but i want to talk about the causes of low self-esteem and exercises / tips on how to increase self-worth.

in this part i want to describe some basic concepts. in the next parts i'll talk more specifically about the actual self, ought self and ideal self.

Source: Chmielewski, F. & Hanning, S. (2021). Therapie-Tools Selbstwert. Beltz.

i really dislike it when people don’t understand perfectionism.

like, it isn’t always “person who has tons of motivation and spends a ton of time making this thing *just* right”

wayyyyyy more often than not it’s:

”I know that if I try to make this thing, it won’t be perfect, so I simply won’t try.”

which definitely sounds bad, right? but when you realize that it doesn’t just apply to voluntarily making art, then you realize how perfectionism is not at all a good thing in any context. 

“i know that if I try to work on this assignment right now, it won’t be good enough, so i’ll wait until the last possible moment so that I have something forcing me to do it.”

”i know that I should start going to the gym, but I won’t see any improvement right away, so I just won’t.”

”i know that i should brush my teeth tonight, but that won’t be good enough to undo the fact that i haven’t brushed them 4 days in a row, so I just won’t.”

perfectionism isn’t the uncontrollable impulse to make things “just right”. (although it can occasionally manifest as this.)

perfectionism is the absolute, psychological inability to accept the concepts of “good enough” and “better than nothing”. even when you spell it out for yourself in a long text post like this.

Proper boundaries

“Writing to you is like kissing you. It is something physical,”

— Simone de Beauvoir, from a letter to Nelson Algren c. November 1949

“Once someone touched my jaw so softly I cried. Once someone held my hand so lightly I wept —”

— Sanna Wani, from “Meditation”, My Grief, the Sun

“Go and love someone exactly as they are. then, watch how they transform into the greatest truest version of themselves. when one feels seen and appreciated in their own essence, one is instantly empowered.”

— Wes Angelozzi

To lovely humans who were excluded from invitations, left behind when they tied their shoes, forced to walk in the grass when the sidewalk was full, spoken over when you tried to contribute, whispered about or laughed at, given side-eye when you tried to fit in…. you are so worthy of love.

“When it rains - look for rainbows. When it’s dark - look for stars.”

— Unknown

“I pray you quit overthinking, replaying failed scenarios, feeding self doubt & seeing the good in everyone but yourself. You deserve more.”

— Lexyne Grays

Ecosomatics: The Body And Earth As One

Holy Fuck. I ACTUALLY DID IT

A bit of a life update! After two long LONG years of relentlessly studying, preparing research, taking exams, and writing endless papers..

I'm happy to announce I have graduated with honors with a Master in Clinical Psychology. I ended this journey with a 4.0 GPA and in the top percentage of my graduating class!

Shoshin

Shoshin (Beginner's Mind/Spirit) is the Zen concept of maintaining a beginner's mind, a state of childlike curiosity and open mindfulness that allows us to let go of biases and assumptions in order to further progress in our understanding of a subject or skill. When we think we already know something we tend to reject or challenge new information, blocking us from going deeper. It is important to allow yourself to listen and to view something from a new perspective, then you will be able to gain deeper insights into your own way of doing things. It is like having a cup that is already full, you cannot fill it again until you have absorbed the previous cup. The mind must be emptied before it can be filled once again. By using this process of open mindfulness and childlike eagerness to learn, you can acquire and improve your skills and abilities much faster if you realize there is always more to learn.

- Steven D. Solomon, Lorie J. Teagno

Mars and Earth Dance - Hubble Space

Man is many things, but he is not rational.

― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray,

"Thank you," he said. For what did not matter; smile, say the right kind of words in the right kind of way, and always, always radiate confidence like a supernova.

Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Congratulations! Today, you get to learn the difference between memory and recall. There is an important difference, and understanding that difference will make you a better ally to the disabled community and also more understanding of your own brain!

What is memory?

Memory is the information your brain has stored for later. Let's make an analogy: your memory can be compared to files stored on a computer. Your brain is extremely complex and has a deep, layered filing system.

When your roommate's friend visits and introduces herself, you put her name in one of the many name folders. Our brains are complex enough that we can assume there are thousands of those folders, each for a different type of name and how you know it: friend names, immediate family names, extended family names, classmate names, coworker names, celebrity names, and so on and so forth, forever.

What is recall?

Recall is not whether you have something stored, but whether you can find it. Like that photo of you at summer camp in sixth grade that's stored somewhere on your computer, the information you learn throughout daily life is sorted somewhere into your brain's filing system. The longer ago that you put the information into the system, the harder it is to find, unless you frequently visit those files.

For the average instance of recall, people generally use the equivalent of the search bar of their brain's filing system. The information is sorted precisely so it's, naturally, recalled in the blink of an eye.

However, you may have had moments of recall issues. Everyone does here and there. The sensation of a word being on the tip of your tongue is a common example of issues with recall. You know the word, but it's just not coming up when you search for it.

In instances like these, you end up kind of manually rooting around in your brain's folders, desperately looking for associated folders that it might have been mis-stored in. You're trying to think of a vegetable you know of, so you start listing off other vegetables to yourself, as if sifting through the vegetable folder.

Sometimes, this association game can bring forth the missing file - or in this case, vegetable name. In other cases, you simply have to let it go and wait for it to come to you later. That might mean you smacking your forehead 48 hours later when you're in the middle of driving to work and the name of that vegetable suddenly throws itself right in the middle of your internal monologue.

Recall and disability

So, what does this have to do with disability? Well, the average person may have occasional recall issues, but for many disabled people, these issues are extremely prevalent. For neurodivergent folks or those with brain fog, we can end up having trouble recalling things many times in a day. It is extremely frustrating and can even be embarrassing in social situations.

For example, your roommate's friend, who you've hung out with on multiple occasions and heard numerous stories about might drop by six months later and you might stand there trying to avoid talking while you scramble desperately through your name files trying to recall her name when you know it's in there somewhere. It's a real life reproduction of that scene in SpongeBob where he only knows how to be a waiter. By the time she addresses you, it's too little too late and you have to admit that for some reason her name is evading you. It's humiliating.

Be understanding of recall issues

These issues have little to do with how important something is to a person. If you know someone who's disabled and they have frequent issues recalling words or names, it's just because the search function in their brain sometimes breaks down and they have to rely on manually digging through the billions of memories they have to try and find what they're looking for.

If you know someone with this issue who is comfortable with it, try filling in the gaps for them! It can be a fun bonding experience, especially between two people with recall issues, to immediately offer a word that seems to fit the flow of the sentence as soon as the other starts to draw a blank. The better you know them, the easier it is.

If you know someone with recall issues, be patient when they use you as a living thesaurus. You're saving them countless hours of googling or agonizing over what that word was - you know, the one that's like willingly suffering for an extended period of time about something that may or may not matter? (I just had issues recalling 'agonizing' 😔)

Anyway, that's all for today! I hope you've all learned something new about recall and how it affects people with disabilities differently/more frequently than the average person

“I accept that life is uncertain - that the goal is not to become more certain about anything but to relax more into the mystery of not knowing what will come next. And then, miracle of miracles, out there in the deep and uncertain water, I come into a peaceful knowing - a faithful wisdom that surpasses control and certainty.” —Elizabeth Lesser

painting by Mao Hamaguchi

Thinking about how the temporary nature of some things, relationships, experiences, etc. can actually make them more beautiful. What felt soul-crushing before is now a fond memory that I carry with me everywhere i go.